Pesticides in our food

Testing for pesticides in our food is done by the FDA and USDA. The testing is not done very well according to the GAO. (Don't you like the abbreviations in the previous sentences? Well, it's the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the General Accounting Office.)

While the FDA data from 2008 through 2012 show that pesticide residue violation rates in 10 selected fruits and vegetables were low, the GAO felt that their approach to monitoring for violations was weak. For example, the FDA uses small samples for testing; when testing imported shipments the sample size was less than one-tenth of 1 percent. Also, the FDA does not test for several commonly used pesticides with an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established tolerance (the maximum amount of a pesticide residue that is allowed to remain on or in a food)—including glyphosate, the most used agricultural pesticide. Hence, the FDA cannot achieve one of its objectives: to determine the national incidence and level of pesticide residues in the foods it regulates.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service's (FSIS) tests domestic and imported meat, poultry, and processed egg product. Again, there was a problem with the testing process in that it did test meat, poultry, and processed egg products for all pesticides with established EPA tolerance levels. 

The most recent data from USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service's (AMS) annual survey of highly consumed commodities, including fruits and vegetables, show that, from 1998 through 2012, pesticide residue detections varied by commodity and were generally well below tolerance levels.